"What? What is it?" Annie says. Nothing, I tell her. I'm just...I don't know. I'm stuck. "Stuck how?" You know, I say, stuck. I'm here and I have a steady job now and I make too much money and that's it. I mean...what kind of weblog is that going to make? Oh my god, today I totally went to work and then came home. Or, Yesterday was payday so I got my check and paid the electric bill.

"So?" So nothing. You ever feel like your life is a bad narrative? I mean for a while it was all action. Boy breaks up with girlfriend and finishes college. Boy starts DJ'ing and drinking alot. Country boy moves to the city. Then there were three months where I lived with Ben, Dave, Farsheed, and Drew. But much better character development because you could read about things I was talking about on their websites too. And that was fun, you know? Boy moves to big city. He drinks, he DJs. He makes friends and puts new numbers in his cellphone.

And then I met you and we came up with that great plot twist where I lost my job, bailed on my apartment, and moved to Brooklyn with you. You got me jobs and we worked together and introduced me to people and then here we are now. I drink and I DJ.

It was unnoticable while I was writing because I had drama on the screen everyday. Boys mother leaves when he's eleven. No one knows why. Boy character meets girl character in San Fransisco. They get caught in the rain and make out in a laundry mat while their clothes dry. She leaves. Boy finds his mothers car in Seattle. He chases it down and loses it. Then he shows up at the girls house in Kentucky. And then there's the ending that I just can't tell anyone. But it's big.

But now I'm on a six week writing hiatus and I miss the action.

"Why don't you get your own place then next month?" I sit there and think for a moment. I see the rent check I've already cut for our apartment. And then all the lightbulbs in the room blow up. That's brilliant! I say. Perfect twist! Yes! You've got it!

I went out that night and I drink and I DJ. Annie calls me at two in the morning. "There's alot of good apartments on craigslist right now. I sent you a link." Yes, I know, I say. But none of the ones that start on May 1st are up yet.

"No. When I said you should move out I meant next month. As in right now. April 1st."

And all I could think was: Brilliant! The plot thickens!

If I knew how the human brain worked I would be amazed. Two things:

1) This conversation just popped into my head:

Late winter, 2000. I'm in the middle of an everything-going-okay? with you? conversation with a woman who will not be my girlfriend in five days.

Me: You just seem...kinda...you know...

Her: I don't know. I've just really felt kind of blah? Sort of..it's hard to explain? I just--I've just been listening to a lot of Fionna Apple lately?

2) I dream in premises. The other day I woke up laughing. Not just smiling but the pressure of laughing in my chest pulled me out of bed. In the dream I was visiting someone in a nursing home. I don't even know who. But the nurses there were really nice. I remember that one was a big fat black lady and the rest were white girls. The old people in the nursing home slept with pained expressions on their faces. Squinting, constipated. If any of them died in their sleep--they would make ugly corpses.

"Turn around! Turn Around!" the nurse says to me. I do and I hear a shuffling. When I turn* back all of the nurses are in bed with patients and they're pretending to have freaky sex with them. Each nurse looks like they're posing for a photo. They bend over (for some reason, all of them are receiving). The black nurse is getting it from the black guy in bed three, the white nurses are lordosing** in bed with the white people. Everyone played it really straight and it's clear that this is their best office joke. But that's really all I remember in the dream.

That and I woke up thinking, Ha, why did the black nurse have to do the black guy?

*The word "turn" is the second most used verb in my new novel draft. What the fuck does that mean?
** I've been waiting three years to use that word in a sentence.

Annie's gone and I'm on a six-week writing hiatus, which means I spend alot of my time either drunk or watching The Daily Show. Long before I had a girlfriend, I spent all my days reading and listening to records and getting drunk/ recovering from getting drunk / watching the Daily Show. Which means I have recommendations:

1) Best way to enjoy two books at once: Please Kill Me is a hilarious account of punk's early days, beginning ing 1965 with Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, and The MC5. Most rock books are written for morons who barely have the attention span for liner notes. And this is an intelligent compromise. The whole book tells one single story but it's told in three paragraph segments by Iggy Pop, most of the Ramones, etc. Then I read Never Mind The Pollacks, which is written by a man I wish I knew and whose weblog is actually worth reading. He also has a great column in Nerve called "Bad Sex With Neal Pollack". The novel follows a ficticious Neal Pollack (Bob Dylan's Muse, Rolling Stone's roadie) through all of rock's history (from his bar mitzvah with Elvis to introducing Lour Reed to heroin). It hilarious and it gets funnier when you read the first book and know how much shit Lou Reed's friends talk about him.

2) Best record to play at any DJ event ever, anywhere. M.I.A.'s Arular. When you read about music history you can't help wondering why these losers ever hung out together. Get ahold of yourselves, assholes. Stop only making friends with junkies. Move out of the Lower East Side! What do you expect when you live in a crackhouse? Yesterday I stayed at home for most of the morning so that I wouldn't expend enough energy to have to eat. I called off from my new job so I could work my old job and have actual money. When my laptop ran out of battery I went to the record store/coffee shop downstairs (in the words of Neal Pollack: "Please don't commit suicide after reading that last sentence. It's just where this story begins.") to see if one of dozens of people sitting around staring into their iBooks* could help.** A friend of mine who works there pressed the record into my hands, pressed listening station headphones to my ears, and gave his strongest recommendation. He gave me a promo 12" which is worthless to everyone in modern society, but somehow I felt I needed to buy it and CD

When I went to pay I thought, Great, last night I hid some money in my wallet so I wouldn't find it and spend it on alcohol!. And then I went home and read more about losers who throw their money away on worthless fleeting things. Then I put the record in my bag, imported all the tracks onto my laptop and I haven't touched either hardcopy since.

* How does this pay them money? How do they turn these hours of dicking around and drinking coffee into a profit? I must find out.
**This story is way to long as it is, but Annie's out of town and we only have one power cord to share because I'm a humungous clutz.

My favorite part of drinking too much--and I know I've said this before--is that the next day your friends have hilarious stories to tell. You're the star but you have no idea how it ends. For St. Patrick's day I met up with Pete after work. When I woke up this morning all I could remember is that I brought an apple juice bottle full of whiskey with me into a bar. I bought one beer, drained it and filled the glass with whiskey.

When I went to get my second, I dropped the cap on the floor and never saw it again. I was not willing to waste any bit of this so I drained the bottle in the glass and we sat there until it was finished. The two nastiest people in the bar had somehow found each other from across the room and decided to procreate right next to us. They made out, without pause, for over half an hour. With some prodding of memory today I now recall that they stopped for just a moment to order drinks.

I don't remember exactly how this came up, but we knew the nasty girl hadn't touched her drink at all, nabbed it from the table and drank it along with our half pint of whiskey. Then at some point--I think Pete must have a sixth sense--he looks down and says, "There's two bottles of Harp on the ground." I offered my support. "I tried to grab it and the bottom of the bag fell out." He went back again, tossed them to me and I stuffed them in my bag. We had one of them there (insert comic scene of us trying to open a non-twist off with a set of carkeys).

The last thing I really remember clearly is that a girl walks into the bar and recognize's Pete from when they were in gradeschool. Weird coincidence and all, but all I remember is her saying that she's studying the prominence of alcoholism in our culture. And I said--thinking I was being both hilarious and appropriate--"That's remarkable, you know last week I realized that all of my heroes drank themselves to death."

Pete's account of the night is much more thrilling because he remembers the next three hours: at one point a bum comes out to us while he hangs on my arm, later we scream Irish songs, eat drunk-food, and go to a club. All I remember about the club is that we got in for free, a friend of mine knew the promoters and moments later I found another beer in my hand thanks to those guys. So there, if I'm ever blackout drunk with you and you want me to remember you the next day: get me a drink.

Part of my growing up is that I can handle clubs now. I still won't pay twenty dollars to listen to shitty music, I won't stand outside in the cold in line unless there's a band, and I hate paying six dollars for a bottle of beer. But when I'm already hammered, when I get in for free, when I get free drinks, when I dance forever, when I don't have to sit around, sober, talking about how much I hate clubs--then I'm okay with them. There's probably a sick, I-got-invited-to-the-cool-kids-party thing behind it all. But whatever.

It's also funny to see what I remember when I'm hammered like that. Until I read Pete's account my night seemed like this: I dropped a cap, drank too much, three british girls told me my backpack was fabulous, and then somehow I was in bed.

A Few Suggestions for Changes in Modern Society for the Benefit of Novelists and Screenwriters:

1) Secret redial buttons on payphones. "How did you get this number?" "That's not important right now."

2) Make it not illegal to poison someone. Then no one would get shot, but lots of people would die unexpectedly just after they've revealed something important.

3) Put conductors back on trains and busses. Overstaff all of them so that poor people can get awkward advice from a total stranger without the benefit of a cab driver.

4) Actually have super heroes. If men in tights were normal then we'd have to come up with even cooler things to entertain us.

5) Ditto any kind of heist. The way people steal things right now is downright lame.

6) Make a master list of who is actually supposed to fall in love with whom. Then at the end you'll know for sure. But make it like your credit rating where all the wrong people can find out for free and keep it from you, but if you want to know yourself you have to pay a big fee and have it mailed to you weeks later.

7) A professional person with whom main characters could unload piles of exposition, perhaps even digest troublesome portions of the script. It would be great if this person could ask many probing questions and be only interest in the hard, uncomfortable realities of life. It would also be great if this person could have a degree in what they do. No one trusts astrologists. Maybe if they were doctors who specialize in brain functions. Yeah. Everyone believes doctors. But then if you wanted them to stop believing in the brain doctor, you could just have the doctor sleep with their patient

8) Better diseases. Maybe one where everytime you tell a lie you have to tell the truth about something you meant to lie about. Or one where you can stop drinking alcohol to the point where you get so drunk you say things you didn't mean to say.

9) Make it so that people are only capable of falling in love three times. This whole "biological clock" business is just boring. If that doesn't work out well then make it like a shot clock in basketball so that people who fall in love when they're sixteen but break up with someone when they're twenty eight have to fall in love again before they turn thirty. Put it on the decade like that so people who fall in love for the first time at twenty-nine but break up at thirty one can have until they are forty-nine to fall in love for the last time.

10) Make it so that it's as easy to get married as it is in Las Vegas, but as hard to get divorced as it is in Alabama. Personally, I think drama was a lot better back when people got irrevocably married all the time.

There are a number of social engagements I have to attend to this evening. And I am seriously considering wearing my headphones for the rest of the day just so that no one can kill this fantastic mood I'm in. After three years of daily frustration I have just printed out the entire novel-project.

I walked around Williamsburg with my iPod on listening to indie pop all afternoon, smiling at the cold afternoon and wishing that everyone I know could understand the joy of jamming your own printer with four hundred pages of your own work.

Moments ago I typed the last sentence of the third--and almost finally--draft of my novel project. Rather than quote myself or invite everyone over to fellate my new draft when it finishes printing (460 pages)--I'm going to ask Microsoft Word to Auto Summarize the entire project:

“What guy?”
Hampshire asked. “Cause if not we could—”
Parents’ dream, right?
Hard work! “People,” Trout shouted. Hampshire poured coffee. Hampshire waves to them. Honestly, Mom was right: Men. Man, that school. “Yeah.”
“Right.”
Something’s not right. “Right. Especially with Hampshire.”
School blows. “Right.”
If you get back.”
Stop. “Yeah.”
Hampshire ignored his duties and turned right. Hampshire ran outta surfaces to clean.
“Right. “Yeah. “Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Right.”
“Wait!” “Yeah.”
Conor walked up to the car. “If we’re lucky.”
“Yeah?”
“Dude,” Hampshire knocks on the car window. “Right, yeah, fine. “Yeah, yeah, I’m right here.”
Fixed my car. “Right after school.”
You’re gonna go, right? “he talks.”
“Be right over.”
“Ben. “Guys. Hampshire looks right at me. “Yeah, kid?”
“Conor? “Dad?” “Conor. “Yeah.”
Dad, Conor, Micks, Sherry, Ms. Hampshire. “Yeah. “Yeah. Right there. Hampshire says.
“Right,” he says.
Hampshire fakes the shock. Hampshire walks in to pay.
*
Including Hampshire. “Yeah,” Hampshire nods. “At seven, right? Yo, Hampshire. Dat’s right dat’s right
Hampshire smoked a cigar. Right.”
Hampshire rolls right over us. Am I right?”
Ham: Sorry man. Josh: Guys. Josh: Damn right.
We’re right here. Walking, walking, walking. Yeah.
(runs)
Josh: Yeah.
Right. A car? Josh: Yo guys!
The cars doors open. All guys. Josh: Right. What if someone lives there? What if a couple of people live there? What if some people just meet there? “Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Wait. “Hey guys.”
“Yeah. “Yeah. (“Yeah,”) “Right,” he says. “Right, right, big mountains.”
“Never. “Yeah. “Right.”
Two guys. “Nice,” Hampshire opens the door and steps outta the car. “Hampshire was it?” Picking the right car is impossible.”
Hampshire asks.
Hampshire asks the mirror.
Man. “Right on.” Hampshire asks.
“Yeah. Yeah. Hampshire pops in the door.
I’m Hampshire’s friend.”
“Right. Right. “Right. “Be right out.”

Big screen. Hampshire face lights up, “Oh man. Especially Hampshire. Hampshire pulls lunch outta my bag. Hampshire had the map. Hampshire’s number. “Hampshire!!” Hampshire says nothing. Hampshire checks the trunk. Even if we gotta drive home. Even if we gotta go home tonight. Hampshire walks in from the phone.
A worker Hampshire knows. “Look,” Hampshire says. “Hampshire. “Hampshire.”
People talk. “It’s my dad’s car. “You’re prolly right. “Conor. “Conor? “There’s. If Hampshire died toda—
“Right. “Right.”
Right.”
Hampshire grabs the shit-handle. People buy new cars. “Right.”
Hampshire’s hands cover his mouth. I turn to Hampshire.
“Glyndwr,” Hampshire says. “Right, right. Hampshire stops.
Never.”
What if, you know? “Right.” People clean. It’s time for work.” “Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if—”
“Sorry, sorry man. Wait. “Yeah. “Conor. “Yeah. “Oh, right. Am I right?” “All right everybody!” Hampshire yells.
Hampshire’s eyes widen. “Ah-right!” “Hampshire. “Drive.”
“Damn right.”
“Yeah,” Hampshire says. “Oh man,” Hampshire croons. “Right? Hampshire tells the woman
“Yeah. You’re driving this car. “You’re right wilcome”
The car, the road, the people. “If,” I say. “Wait.”
Hampshire asks.
“Dad.”
Hampshire stops her hand and turns it up.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. “People work there, okay? Hey, kid. “Right. “Yeah, well. “Conor.

Man, that's dada as hell.

Moments ago I typed the last sentence of the third--and almost finally--draft of my novel project. Rather than quote myself or invite everyone over to fellate my new draft when it finishes printing (460 pages)--I'm going to ask Microsoft Word to Auto Summarize the entire project:

“What guy?”
Hampshire asked. “Cause if not we could—”
Parents’ dream, right?
Hard work! “People,” Trout shouted. Hampshire poured coffee. Hampshire waves to them. Honestly, Mom was right: Men. Man, that school. “Yeah.”
“Right.”
Something’s not right. “Right. Especially with Hampshire.”
School blows. “Right.”
If you get back.”
Stop. “Yeah.”
Hampshire ignored his duties and turned right. Hampshire ran outta surfaces to clean.
“Right. “Yeah. “Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Right.”
“Wait!” “Yeah.”
Conor walked up to the car. “If we’re lucky.”
“Yeah?”
“Dude,” Hampshire knocks on the car window. “Right, yeah, fine. “Yeah, yeah, I’m right here.”
Fixed my car. “Right after school.”
You’re gonna go, right? “he talks.”
“Be right over.”
“Ben. “Guys. Hampshire looks right at me. “Yeah, kid?”
“Conor? “Dad?” “Conor. “Yeah.”
Dad, Conor, Micks, Sherry, Ms. Hampshire. “Yeah. “Yeah. Right there. Hampshire says.
“Right,” he says.
Hampshire fakes the shock. Hampshire walks in to pay.
*
Including Hampshire. “Yeah,” Hampshire nods. “At seven, right? Yo, Hampshire. Dat’s right dat’s right
Hampshire smoked a cigar. Right.”
Hampshire rolls right over us. Am I right?”
Ham: Sorry man. Josh: Guys. Josh: Damn right.
We’re right here. Walking, walking, walking. Yeah.
(runs)
Josh: Yeah.
Right. A car? Josh: Yo guys!
The cars doors open. All guys. Josh: Right. What if someone lives there? What if a couple of people live there? What if some people just meet there? “Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Wait. “Hey guys.”
“Yeah. “Yeah. (“Yeah,”) “Right,” he says. “Right, right, big mountains.”
“Never. “Yeah. “Right.”
Two guys. “Nice,” Hampshire opens the door and steps outta the car. “Hampshire was it?” Picking the right car is impossible.”
Hampshire asks.
Hampshire asks the mirror.
Man. “Right on.” Hampshire asks.
“Yeah. Yeah. Hampshire pops in the door.
I’m Hampshire’s friend.”
“Right. Right. “Right. “Be right out.”

Big screen. Hampshire face lights up, “Oh man. Especially Hampshire. Hampshire pulls lunch outta my bag. Hampshire had the map. Hampshire’s number. “Hampshire!!” Hampshire says nothing. Hampshire checks the trunk. Even if we gotta drive home. Even if we gotta go home tonight. Hampshire walks in from the phone.
A worker Hampshire knows. “Look,” Hampshire says. “Hampshire. “Hampshire.”
People talk. “It’s my dad’s car. “You’re prolly right. “Conor. “Conor? “There’s. If Hampshire died toda—
“Right. “Right.”
Right.”
Hampshire grabs the shit-handle. People buy new cars. “Right.”
Hampshire’s hands cover his mouth. I turn to Hampshire.
“Glyndwr,” Hampshire says. “Right, right. Hampshire stops.
Never.”
What if, you know? “Right.” People clean. It’s time for work.” “Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if—”
“Sorry, sorry man. Wait. “Yeah. “Conor. “Yeah. “Oh, right. Am I right?” “All right everybody!” Hampshire yells.
Hampshire’s eyes widen. “Ah-right!” “Hampshire. “Drive.”
“Damn right.”
“Yeah,” Hampshire says. “Oh man,” Hampshire croons. “Right? Hampshire tells the woman
“Yeah. You’re driving this car. “You’re right wilcome”
The car, the road, the people. “If,” I say. “Wait.”
Hampshire asks.
“Dad.”
Hampshire stops her hand and turns it up.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. “People work there, okay? Hey, kid. “Right. “Yeah, well. “Conor.

Man, that's dada as hell.

1) I'm now a regular columnist for an alternative newspaper. My column is about "What's On The Internet." Basically they want me to do a write up about what one would gleam from dicking around on the internet for hours at a time.

2) On the same day I got this job I found out that I don't have an office job anymore. There goes all those paid hours of dicking around on the internet.

3) Please. If you find yourself dicking around on the internet, email me about it.

4) This is the electronic age, right? Shouldn't one be able to talk to a famous author and say, Hey, would you mind emailing me an older draft of your most recent novel? I would really like to see what shit you tried to pull before.

That's a short way of introducing this embarassing sentence: You should see what I'm writing. Holy shit. No one has, and therefore I have no reason to beleive it's not fucking great. I walked by my laptop six times today and tried to give it a high five. I'm at the end of a very long novel-project. Things are coming together. Inside jokes, threads, plots, etc.

Back when I had a job where I pretty much spent my days dicking around on the internet, I heard a great NPR commentary by Jon Stewart where he talked about why some people are funny. He mentioned one thing that stuck with me: when you're with your friends, talking about things you know, commenting on things you've all experienced, you have the premise. The hardest part for a comedian is setting the stage.

And now that I'm six pages shy of finishing this project, I don't have to say, Martha says this because there is a popular song in this world we've invented wherein the chorus is, approximately, a built in connundrum concerning the conflicting nature of... I can just print the chorus. And you know that the narrator is getting at.

Things I would Do If I worked for Andy Warhol now, but with the Clout he had in 1967

1) Have a party where everyone played their ringtones into a microphone and did Karaoke to them.

1) I got a job at the steak house across from the largest fiction publisher in New York!

My interviewer was very enthusiastic about my experience and also my tie. "That's another nice tie you have on there. Where did you get it?"

"My girlfriend got it for me in Chicago."

"Oh, do you remember where?"

"I think it's uh..." Shit. What's the name of a designer? What good is watching The OC every week if you cannot remember any designers? "Marc Jacobs."

"Really?" he says, flipping through my police record. "I didn't know Marc Jacobs made ties."

Fuck.

"I think he's starting to. You know. Just in Chicago for now."

2) My scooter started!

3) I interviewed someone mildly famous! This was convenient because I was already wearing my tie. But when I got there to interview him, I was sat at my table by the manager who interviewed as a server there. Thank god I made no impression before.

I had nine dollars. Four of which I spent on a single cup of coffee at the bar. Mr. Mildly Famous ordered a sandwich. My rent check went through that morning and left my bank account empty. So I realized that--while we were wrapped up in a discussion of the role of the audience in the theater and what is in his netflix cue--that I would have to skip out on the check.

He kept diving for his sandwich whenever I would speak, so when I got to the end of my questions I said. "Here, I'll shut this off," (I recorded the interview with the internal mic of my laptop. I cannot believe that worked.) "Give you a chance to eat."

We talked about bands and records we liked. He also has four moles on his face which I always thought were make up. I'm pretty sure I kept staring at them.

"So how long have you been writing for this paper?"

"Gee...maybe five years. On and off. I've worked for the same editor since then."

"That's great that you can do that. I was temping for ten years until my first movie came out."

"Great. Well. This is coming out in next thursdays section. I've got to get back and file this now. Thank you very much." I put five dollars on the table even though I already paid for my coffee. As I walk to the subway feeling like a broke loser, I realize the futility of my last five dollars. When the check comes, it's going to be for eight dollars. Maybe ten. And he's going to pick it up and say, "Great, well that oughta cover the tip. What an ass. And what is he thinking with that tie?" When you're a reviewer everyone tries to buy you, but when you're an interviewer you're expected to buy them things.

4) I just listened to that recording of the interview. Do I really have a lisp?

Labels: Chicago

Two Conflicting Thoughts

1) On the first day of college I wish someone had said to me: "Dinner is only served until 6:30 and if you're going to be writing anything--especially something resembling a novel--the first thing you're going to have to do is be able to explain it in one paragraph." I thought, wrongly--and informed by cheap wine discussions in the upstairs of Shakespeare & Co.'s in Paris--that true art could never be explained. "I mean, when you think about it," we said, straightening our berets, probably, "The Last Supper is a painting of thirteen guys eating dinner. And what do you say about Monet? He paints flowers? Hey, did you see the Mona Lisa? It's a woman with a weird smile and the horizon is an improper fraction."

Later that night, I threw up on a Mini. What I should have done is gone home and picked up the books I admire and tried to write a blurb. High Fidelity is the story of a record obsessed Brit whose girlfriend has just left him. White Teeth is the story of two war buddies who grow up and have intertwined families in North London. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night is the story about an autistic child who finds a dead dog and gets blamed for it. He tries to find out who did it but everytime he does it makes him look guiltier. Breakfast Anytime is the story of a kid whose mother runs away when he is eleven, leaving him to take care of his older brother and father. He spends years dreaming about where she could be and how happy they could be together and when he finally admits that he'll never be in a touring rock band, he and a friend save up and go to these places together.

2) Thank god no one told me what it is like to do a novel-scale project. I wrote four long-short stories my sophomore year of college, printed them about and quietly proclaimed that I had written a novel. Three years later I'm still beating the shit out of the same six characters.

I really wish the new Esquire would come out today. It's the only thing I know that can really make an underemployed, broke, music and film enthusiast feel like a Burberry ad.

Today I'm doing a freelance assignment for a newspaper. I get to interview someone mildy famous. The problem is that Mr. Mildy Famous really wants to go a particular restaurant in soho. And last week I applied to this particular restaurant in soho.

I'm thining of getting a fake mustache just so the manager won't think, "Oh, hey, isn't that Brendan, the guy who applied here? My gosh! He's with someone mildly famous. I should reconsider giving him a job if he knows people who are mildly famous." (walks over to the table). "Brendan? I'm sorry I never got back to you. Who's your friend."

"Oh hi," Mr MF says. "I'm--"

"I loved you on Sex and the City."

"Well, thanks I--"

"And you were just the perfect person for that role in Legally Blonde 2."

"Actually if you would like to see my in my true calling, I am in a play right now that's--"

"Great. So, Brendan. I know this is short notice. But someone just took a shit in the urinal. So if you can get on it soon, you're hired."

Sometimes I still can't get over how good music is right now.

Music!

"Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" by LCD Soundsystem.

If my taste mattered at all I would vote this song into something great because:

1) It's made of a dirty Rick-Rubinesque beat, which is how I've learned to define Rock & Roll.

2) It's five minutes long. This means that while the song is playing, I can pick another and carry on a very short conversation with someone while DJ'ing. I made the briliant move of trying to establish myself as someone who plays extremely old school. Meaning I play pre-rock from the thirties. Robert Johnson's influences. And most of those songs are about a minute and a half long. Maybe two. That's thirty to forty songs per hour. And for all my reservations about house music, without it (or without its influences) I would never get a break. Plus it has the dance-track secret weapon: overdubbed cowbell.

3) Last summer Ben called me to tell me he had a surprise. A really great band was playing that night, so I assumed his surprise was that the really great band was in our house, sitting on our only couch. I can remember being six years old and whenever the doorbell rang I assumed it was a one in ten chance of being Michael Jackson.:

Daft Punk is playing at my house, my house
"I'll show you the ropes, kid,
show you the ropes.
I bought fifteen cases for my house
all the furniture is in the garage
I waited seven years and fifteen days
There's every kid for miles at my house
And the neighbors can't call the police.
Everybody's lined up at my house
and sarah's girlfriend is working the doors.
My god, everybody's peeing at my house."

What will happen in the world if the new pope is attractive? What if the new guy looks like Johnny Depp, you know? Or what if they decide to pick a new, incontinent, unintelligible Pollack?

This is important (to me).

When I go bald: tell me. Right now I have what you would call a "widow's peak." And when I have job interviews I part my hair at the most acute angle, which means one side of my widow's valley. I find this a bit too unnecessary and feel like George McFly from the first 1985. So to rectify this, I pull over a small piece of hair. I don't combover anything. But I know that someday I will get a new haircut, and I won't like it. And I won't like it because it makes my forehead look big. And my forehead will look big because I have gone bald. But I won't be able to admit that to myself. So I just want you to tell me.